Tab separated values in awk

Question

How do I select the first column from the TAB separated string     echo  LOAD SETTLED    LOAD INIT       2011-01-13 03 50 01    awk -F  t    print  1     The above will return the entire line and not just  LOAD SETTLED  as expected   Update   I need to change the third column in the tab separated values  The following does not work   echo  line   awk  BEGIN   -v var   mycol new  FS       t          print  1  2 var  4  5  6  7  8  9     gt  gt   pdump temp txt   This however works as expected if the separator is comma instead of tab   echo  line   awk -v var   mycol new  -F  t    print  1      2     var      4      5      6      7      8      9      gt  gt   pdump temp txt

User · Answer

Make sure they re really tabs  In bash  you can insert a tab using C-v TAB    echo  LOAD SETTLED    LOAD INIT       2011-01-13 03 50 01    awk -F   t    print  1   LOAD SETTLED

User · Answer

echo  LOAD SETTLED    LOAD INIT       2011-01-13 03 50 01    awk -v var  test   BEGIN   FS       t          print  1   t  var   t   3

User · Answer

You can set the Field Separator         awk  BEGIN  FS   t     print  1     Excellent read   https   docs freebsd org info gawk gawk info Field Separators html

User · Answer

Should this not work   echo  LOAD SETTLED    LOAD INIT       2011-01-13 03 50 01    awk   print  1

User · Answer

You need to set the OFS variable  output field separator  to be a tab   echo   line     awk -v var   mycol new  -F    t   BEGIN  OFS   FS    3   var  print      make sure you quote the  line variable in the echo statement

User · Answer

Use  awk -v FS   t  -v OFS   t        Example from one of my scripts  I use the FS and OFS variables to manipulate BIND zone files  which are tab delimited   awk -v FS   t  -v OFS   t        -v record type  record type       -v hostname  hostname       -v ip address  ip address    1  hostname  amp  amp   3  record type   4 ip address   print     zone file  gt   temp  This is a clean and easy to read way to do this

[awk] Tab separated values in awk

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